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Monday, May 23, 2016

Do Black Lives Matter to “Black Lives Matter”?

We are now more than one year removed from Gray’s death. In that time, hundreds more black men have died in the course of dramatic crime spikes in major American cities. At the same time, in many of those same cities, police have made fewer arrests, executed fewer stops, and confiscated fewer weapons. At least one prominent skeptic is now asserting that the so-called “Ferguson effect” is the “leading hypothesis” to explain the crime surge, and statistical site FiveThirtyEight has done more than anyone to document its existence in Chicago.

There is a chance that the Nero verdict will strike at least a small blow for sanity and reason, but it’s more likely that the outcome will cause Black Lives Matter and its sympathizers to redouble their efforts. As soon as the decision came down, there was an ugly scene outside the courthouse in Baltimore as protesters chased and surrounded Nero’s family — people unquestionably innocent of any wrongdoing.

No one believes that every single police officer is a person of integrity. And certainly no one with any sense believes that all police are law-abiding. When there is probable cause to believe that an officer has committed a crime, they should face prosecution to the same extent as any other citizen. But when politicians respond to riots with indictments — and then when activists respond to acquittals with chants of “no justice, no peace” — it is certainly understandable that police feel besieged.

Black Lives Matter activists and their white-progressive enablers seem not to care. In the rough calculus of social justice, it appears that lives taken by civilians matter far less than lives taken by police, and if hundreds more have to die to save the few, then so be it. After all, isn’t there an old saying about omelettes and eggs that applies?

Officer Nero rightly walks free. Now would be the ideal time to rethink the anti-police witch-hunt, but I won’t hold my breath. The narrative of police oppression is too fixed in the leftist mind, and progressive elites still have too much to gain by keeping it that way.

Black Lives Matter, quite simply, only seems to care about the lives of blacks shot by cops. And it doesn’t seem to matter to them whether the cop was at fault or not. He’s white, therefore, he’s guilty.

Quite simply, these race hustlers would rather have a series of grievances than to save black lives. Black lives only matter to them if their loss promotes a political agenda.